


dum spiro spero

by neverendingdream



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: (derogatory), Character Study, F/M, Force-Sensitive Jyn Erso, Hope, Non-Linear Narrative, The Force, ish, pretentious metaphors and stuff u saw the latin in the title u know how this goes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28083960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverendingdream/pseuds/neverendingdream
Summary: trans: while i breathe, i hope.or: jyn, after.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	dum spiro spero

**Author's Note:**

> so. what happened was that it was may the fourth, I was stuck in quarantine and obsessively reading things and I finally decided to read the rogue one novel (spoiler alert: it ruined me) and I started typing out this idea and now it’s many months later and its the r1 anniversary! I really wanted to finish it and. it is done. but it also makes absolutely 0 cents of sense.

Here's what you always forget about hope: hope isn't a _thing_. Hope is alive. It's an idea planted in the mind of someone who'll water it, let it grow wild. It's a girl trading dolls for a blaster, scowls for a cultivated smile, and the promise of a better world, her eyes on the open stars. It's a boy, barely at the start of his story, dreaming of the sky and beyond, watching the twin suns rise. It's two gazes colliding, hot and heavy, across a crowded, noisy room, his words burning hot on her tongue, breaking her walls down, forging something new.

Jyn has never been a storyteller. She has a fairly good memory, she'll admit, and if she'd let it, her memory would tell her that her mother used to say she had her father's keen eye, would tell her that Saw used to say that she noticed things others overlooked. What she doesn't allow herself to have is imagination— a luxury for a child thrown into battle, a trap for anyone coming of age to nothing but their name. She doesn't see the threads of a story woven around her, around her world, spooling and unspooling, a tale told again and again to a galaxy that hasn't learned its lesson. 

What she does see are little things, breaths of time in the before, the during, and in between. She doesn't like to look back, to dwell. All she has are a scattered few moments, stars she can't quite bring herself to draw the lines between to create a constellation.

But here, in the after, in this place out of focus, she does.

First, or perhaps last, or somewhere in between, Scarif implodes in a fury of dust and fire and destruction. Cassian's fingers dig into her back. She crushes her chest to his. His arms around her tighten, and she would've thought she would be scared, but she and the man she holds close are spent, no energy, no reason left to run, their hope, their souls taken flight above them.

_(the Tantive IV shoots away in a blur of stars)_

She sees bright, blinding light, looks death in the eyes and does not flinch, and then—

Nothing.

Her eyes open on an empty stretch of sand. In the distance, she thinks she can hear the ocean.

Scarif. _A_ _gain._

She blinks. Her arms close around what should’ve been something— _someone_ who should've been there beside her.

"Cassian!" She calls, knowing there won't be any response. "Cassian!"

She shouts his name, over and over, until it has to claw its way out of her throat, ragged and rough and raw, until it's feral and mangled and gives way to a sob. Instinctively, she shoves the back of her hand against her mouth, muffling the sound. Tears have brought her nothing but trouble in the past. But what does it matter now, in whatever time she's in now? She lowers her hand slowly. Only the sands of Scarif hear her cries.

She's not sure how long she cries. Minutes, possibly. Probably something closer to hours. Maybe a day. All the while, Scarif's sun blazes on overhead, drying tears to nothing but trails of salt down her cheeks, crusting a layer of sand along her damp palms. Somewhere in her heart, she knows: they're all dead. And she should be. Or maybe she _is_ and Scarif is her reckoning, the Force's way of telling her she'd not done enough good to cancel out the bad or had done just enough that the two balanced each other out, leaving her with nothingness. The empty sand, empty sky, and her. Alone, again.

The thought almost breaks her. _Almost_. She shoves it back, scrubs at her eyes with sandy hands, regrets it, and at last, stands.

The wind picks up. There’s an edge to it she remembers from Jedha, from days spent ducking behind ruined buildings to take potshots at stormtroopers. _Sandstorm_. Her blood hums, and her instincts kick in, she scans her surroundings for shelter, but there’s _nothing,_ she’s in the middle of a kriffing _desert,_ even though she knows this is Scarif, and the only desert she’s ever known is Jedha, and just below the wind, she can hear the sound of waves crashing, if she listens hard enough. But now, the wind howls, any sound of the ocean, imagined or not, masked by a sudden gale of sand. She pulls her shirt over her face, closes her eyes, and hopes that the dead can’t die drowning in a sea of sand.

The howling lasts for a day, she thinks, or something close to a day but stretches into weeks, into oblivion, because what is time to someone long dead? She isn’t sure. But when all that’s left is the sound of a distant surf, she uncurls from the fetal position, scraping sand away from her shirt, still covering her eyes and mouth.

The dune shifts under her feet, and then everything blurs. She feels briefly the sense of vertigo, of weightlessness, of falling, and then nothing. Again.

She opens her eyes to darkness. The sound of the surf is gone, replaced by what she thinks is a dull electric hum.

“Is someone there?” A woman’s voice, young, struggling to stay steady. It sounds like she’s been crying.

“I know you’re there,” she says a moment later, and this time, there’s steel in her words. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

Jyn doesn’t know how to respond. _I’m dead,_ or _I’m lost_ or _I have no idea why the fuck I ended up here death was supposed to be easier than this why am I here_ , are all options. She ends up saying nothing.

“Please,” the woman says, her voice falling to a whisper, “say something at least. I need to know I’m not going insane.”

“You’re not,” Jyn blurts without thinking. “I’m a ghost.” Though seeing dead people is, admittedly, what crazy people claim they can do.

The woman exhales softly.

“Tell me a story, then,” she says. “Maybe I’ll see you on the other side soon.”

Jyn swallows. Is this why she isn’t quite dead yet? The Force saw her and her suffering and said, _here, now give hope to this woman like you._ It said, _your job’s not done yet, now do mine, too._

“A story,” she repeats, suddenly aware of how raspy her voice is, how grating her hardness sounds in the darkness. She feels rather than sees the woman nod and smile a little.

“Not any story,” she says. “Tell me your story.”

So, Jyn does.

Her story, like all stories that we keep closest to our hearts, is one of hope.

It starts like this: 

Galen and Lyra Erso on a farm on the furthest reaches of the Galactic Empire, watching their fate approach on the wings of an Imperial shuttle.

Or this:

Saw Gerrera, holding out a hand, lifting her from her hiding place, murmuring _don’t look don’t look_ when she tries to twist around to catch one last glimpse of her parents.

Or this:

The Wobani transport explodes, rebels step through the smoke and blasterfire and flames, and he calls her name.

And then there’s the end. The ends before the end, and then, _the end_.

Her father, Galen Erso is alive and not Imperial scum or a coward, he’s alive and he’s telling her he loves her, that _if she’s happy, it’s more than enough_ , and her walls are shattering, and she falls to her knees in front of her other father.

She leaves both to die.

She hollows herself out. Or she _would_ , she _does_ , she _tries_ , but Jyn Erso was never born to die with her head down, back turned on a Rebellion on its last legs, not when Jedha burns, and there's blood on her father's hands and it's not his and the Rebellion leaves them all to die drowned in the rain like rats on Eadu. She snarls at Cassian who bites back, filling that empty in her with fire, with rage.

There's a mission not yet done, after all. Her father's last words are not for her, they're for the abomination he's created.

 _It can be destroyed,_ he'd said. _Someone has to destroy it._

So she fights. It's all she's ever known.

And before the end:

 _Rebellions are built on hope_ , she says, carves his words on her heart, speaks them aloud as if the sound of them could encompass the scorching need she felt, the weight of her fathers' legacies on her shoulders, her mother's fury in her veins, the look on Cassian's face when he'd spat _some of us_ live _this Rebellion_ tearing the wound inside her wide open, filling it with flames.

She stalks from the room, the stagnation, the disarray, the faces of those who have forgotten what they're fighting for, what it means to do more than be ass-deep in negotiations and power plays and veiled insults, their soldiers mere pawns on their dejarik board spanning planets and star systems, spanning hundreds of lives of people, suffering people who still hope for a better galaxy, a hope that their leaders have lost sight of somewhere along the way.

 _No matter,_ she thinks. If their leaders won't carry the flame of their hope, maybe she will. Maybe she was always meant to.

She remembers her mother, proud to the last. Her father, giving everything for the dream of a galaxy free of the Empire. Both fathers.

This is her legacy, she thinks, her birthright— stardust and dreams in a universe where she has to fight tooth and nail for even the faintest glimmer of light, where she _will_ fight, even if 'til now, surviving's all she's ever known.

She gets her pack, thinks of how she'll sneak her way onto the ship that brought her to the rebellion, tells herself to not wonder how far she'll make it, one person against the rest of the world, tells herself it doesn't matter, all that'll have mattered is that she'll have tried, tried and fought to her last and looked death in the eye before the end.

(But here's the thing about fighting rather than surviving. About winning wars. It's never done alone.)

"Welcome home," he says.

She looks at each of them, their motley crew. Her family. She, the criminal. The pilot. The spy and his best friend. The believer and his cynic. worn weary and ragged, thrown together by circumstance, by tragedy, by anger and grief and a reckless, fiery _want_. They all meet her eyes, and she bares her teeth in a smile.

This is what it means to be hope, she thinks. To be broken and bloody and hold your head high anyway, to be a shell of what you were, and look at the face of death, and know: you are more than the sum of your parts. And even when you die, hope soars higher than anyone can ever fathom.

(We know the rest.  
They take their chances. They fight. They carry that hope, to the last, 'til their chances are spent, to the outstretched hands of their comrades, to the future, to the end of the Empire and the rise of a new, free world.)

By the time she's finished speaking, she realizes her world's once again shifted, the dark of the girl's cell gone, replaced by a never-ending expanse of ever-shifting city lights.

 _Coruscant,_ her mind whispers. She's at the beginning of her story, or perhaps, near another story's end. She bears witness as the galaxy starts to fracture.

There is hope. There is faith. And then there is _complacency._ The Republic, on its last legs, reeks of it.

She weaves through throngs of well-dressed politicians, their small talk hanging heavy in the air, weighty with their intrigues, their corrupted ambitions, the credits lining their pockets. It's easy to see where the fault lines are, the cracks the Imperials found and wriggled their way in through, dangerous parasites they are. Not a single proud senator speaks of hope, of a world they dream of; all they speak of is maintaining the grasp they have on the crumbling world.

None of them notice her, not even when her ghostly elbow goes through one particularly arrogant man's nose. Part of her wishes it'd connect.

(The senators do not ask her for her story. They've grown up in luxury's lap. They do not believe they need to search for a thing like hope. It exists only in their election speeches, silver-tongued words of progress and a brighter future, all empty promises, gone rotten at their core.)

Eventually the crowds of Senators disperse, and she's left wandering the Coruscant streets for an age or more, each passing day taking her down a level, further from the glitz and glamour, down to the suffering the rich turn a blind eye to, far down below.

She's deep in the planet's underbelly one night when a Kiffar man makes direct eye contact with her. His eyes widen, and he nearly stops in his tracks.

 _Shit,_ Jyn thinks, _shitshitshit_. No one’s seen her in what's felt like a lifetime, or at least they don’t really see her, not like this man does, his eyes lingering on her, a question in them. She glances between him, the oblivious passersby, and decides it can't hurt. Perks of being a ghost. Nothing does.

The man keeps walking, and she follows him to a secluded alleyway.

“What are you,” she asks, before he can speak. “How can you see me?”

He shrugs.

“You’re a Force ghost,” he says, by way of non-answer. “I thought only the Jedi became Force ghosts.”

“Is that what you are? A Jedi?” The word stumbles its way off her tongue, the relic of an age before hers, a name only foolish dreamers and the suicidal use now. His eyes narrow, and a muscle works in his jaw.

“Not anymore,” he says at last, and she knows, it’s all she’ll be able to get out of him about himself.

“You called me a Force ghost,” she says instead. “What does that mean?”

“It means you have unfinished business with this world.”

She frowns.

“Already figured that one out. But why _me_?”

He shrugs again.

“Hell if I know.”

He does not say, _the Force is strong in you, Jyn Erso. In another time_ , _maybe you could’ve become a Jedi._

He does not say, _you could’ve been like me._ He does not let himself think, _Aayla would’ve liked you._

He looks at her fiery eyes, the stubborn set of her jaw, the way she’s a breath away from drawing her blaster, even in death, and thinks maybe Rebellion suits her better, maybe the Jedi Order would’ve been, to her, just another cage.

He does not think of himself as Jedi enough to give her the answers she’s asking him for.

Instead he asks, “What are you searching for? What do you hope to find?”

In the distance, she hears shouts. Blasterfire. Then, like an electric shock, like the spark in her heart reignited— a voice calling her name, faint, familiar, half-forgotten.

 _Jyn—!_ she hears, and she doesn't wait for the rest.

She turns to run, and the man nods at her, something like a smile on his face. 

“Force be with you,” he murmurs, and it feels like a blessing of sorts. He doesn’t expect her to respond.

(“Quin, who were you talking to?”

He’s silent for a moment, imagining his fingers curled around a lightsaber hilt, wondering if he’d chosen wrong. He shakes his head, and steps out of the shadows, extends a hand to his wife.

“No one. Let’s go home, Khaleen.”)

  
  
She chases the sound of the voice (his voice) and it echoes down alleyway, through market, through bustling streets until it's just her feet on bare sand again, on an expanse stretching into eternity, with two suns blazing bright overhead when she squints up at the sky.

She calls his name but the dunes swallow it.

"Force," she spits, with a curse and a well-aimed kick at the sand, "let me see them, kriffing ridiculous all-mighty piece of shit, I don't even know why I'm _here_ —"

The ground opens up before she can finish and swallows her, too.

The boy stares at her, eyes wide, unblinking. He does not ask, _are you an angel?_ He does not say, _they’re the most beautiful creatures in the universe_ , and mean that she is.

He was born into a war. His father does not tell him stories of a better universe. He tells him to fight for one.

Jyn holds the spanner out to him, hesitant, as she might've once approached a wild akk dog she thought she could tame. A heartbeat passes. He takes it, eyes still on hers.

"Are you a spy for the Republic?" he asks at last, spanner safely in his hand. She very nearly scoffs at him. Her? Republic trash? _As if._

If she were anyone else, she would speak to fill the silence, and try to make a new friend. But she's _Jyn_ , all hard lines and roughness, and more importantly, she doesn't know how to talk to a child.

He shrugs to himself when she doesn't respond, goes back to his workbench and the droid he'd been tinkering with. She follows.

"What are you working on?" she asks, and his hands on the spanner jerk, his head snapping up. dirty brown hair flops into his eyes, and he finally looks more his age.

"You can talk!" The exclamation bursts out of him, filled with awe, and she winces a bit.

"I'm not a spy," she responds, drier than she meant to be, but a slow, hesitant smile's breaking across his face, and he spins to face her, droid forgotten. A corner of her mouth tugs up at the sight.

"I'm no one," she continues, trying to keep her voice from dropping into the deadpan that's become instinct, "I'm just a ghost, kid."

"A ghost," he repeats, as if he can hardly believe his ears.

"Miss Ghost," he says. "Tell me your story?"

"It's about hope."

"Hope," he echoes, gazing up at her with something close to awe.

"It's what rebellions are built on," she replies.

"You're a rebel?"

She shrugs.

"Once, I was."

It only sounds like half a lie.

"Tell me more, Miss Ghost."

She opens her mouth, tries to think of how to explain her life, how her hope maybe had saved a galaxy, but had ended up with her in this endless nothing, all alone, searching for some answer she doesn't know if she'll ever find. She swallows. The words stick like dust in her throat.

Then—

"Cassian!"

A shout echoes down the hallway, and the boy freezes. Her world stops. _Cassian_ , her mind echoes.

"Cassian, where are you?"

He unfreezes, but the smile's gone.

"Bye, Miss Ghost," he says, and runs out of the room.

The walls fade, and she's back on the Scarif beach, back to the end of it all, back to the start. She falls to her knees in the sand, breath harsh, hands shaking, and her world shudders, then starts again.

"Cassian," she whispers numbly to the distant surf. "I saw Cassian."

Waves crash on. There's no response.

What feels like an eternity passes, and maybe another. She wanders. Picks her way across the dunes, following the sound of the waves, but no matter how far she walks, she never finds herself closer to the water.

Somewhere in between sandstorms, she realizes: this is Scarif as it should've been. As it _would_ have been, had it outlasted this age and the next and the next, had it survived long enough to see its civilizations fall and stay standing, had it lasted until the seas rose and fell and then vanished altogether, leaving nothing but dust, but still _existing_. Scarif's future, had the Death Star not happened, if she had seen Cassian's band of criminals and spies and nobodies and said _no, I'm done fighting_ , if she'd cradled her father's body and not moved when Cassian called to her, if she'd broken after Saw and her father's hologram, if she'd chosen to rot in her cell in Wobani.

This Scarif is her, she realizes. This is what Jyn Erso would've been if she'd rejected her name, the legacies curdling hot and heavy in her blood (echoes of Lyra, of Galen, of Saw), if she'd gone on surviving and never looked up to see the walls of her cage. This is Jyn without hope, Jyn who survives to the end of this era and the dawn of the next, but _for_ _what?_ A glance at the vast emptiness around her is answer enough.

  
"What am I searching for?" She asks the sunburnt air. "What am I hoping to find?"

_What is this Scarif missing? What did it lose, burning itself out just to survive on its own?_

In her heart, she finds, she finally knows the answer. Or perhaps, it'd been with her all along. She'd only needed a long, drawn-out reminder from the Force.

She thinks Chirrut would tell her _that's not how the Force works_ , in fancier words than those. She thinks Baze would scoff, hiding a small, fond smile in his fist, say something cutting in response, and the two would get caught up in another one of their debates. She thinks Bodhi would sidle up next to her, eyes flickering between the couple nervously, about to ask if he should break the argument up. She thinks K-2SO would spout some rude statistic about married couples and arguments, and she thinks the three of them would laugh. Her and Bodhi and— Cassian. His eyes crinkled, head thrown back, smiling like one who didn't have much practice smiling, his arm slung around her shoulders.

_Home. What she’d been searching for was home._

The winds roar up again, and the world fades from around her, one last time. This time, when the world reforms around her, she's back on Scarif, Scarif as it was, before her end, before _their_ end.

He's waiting. (They all are.)

“Cassian,” she says, half sob, half hope, and then they’re in each other’s arms, sand whirling around them, each grain glittering like stardust.

.

.

.

“Jyn,” he says, and his voice is as deep and growling as she remembers, painfully familiar. She digs her fingers into his back, claims him as hers, glares down the Force, thinks, _not today, not ever_. He holds her tighter than their last moments on Scarif, as if he could spend an eternity in her arms, basking in her warmth.

“Welcome home."

She pulls him in for a kiss.

_(somewhere, a boy trades his childhood for a blaster, tells his parents the war’s not over, puts on a helmet and a devil-may-care smirk and routes his starship to fight to a better world._

_somewhere, a girl watches the stars rise over the desert dunes, dreaming of the sky and what lies beyond._

_somewhere, a boy dreams of freedom, dreams of a home long-forgotten, dreams of breaking free of these walls, of forging something new._

_somewhere, a new story begins. hope lives on.)_

**Author's Note:**

> ~~as a kid were u in love with quinlain vos like me or were u normal~~
> 
> i think at some point this fic was (1) more ambitious and (2) more coherent but here we are hopefully it made a tiny bit of sense


End file.
